During the first eight days of 2004, I accompanied 13 of my classmates and Professor Cynthia Mertens on an immersion trip to El Salvador. Those classmates were Natasha Chee, Carmela Woll, Heather Hoblit, Kim Pederson, Pati Ugarte, Danielle Stephens, Sue Lake, Stephanie Grogan, Elizabeth Carroll, Malika Wright Brown, “Comandante” Supriya Bhat, and the two brave males, James Hurley and David Thompson.
To effectively discuss what we did and experienced during those eight days would take an entire book. Our packed itinerary included visiting a progressive union-led “maquila” (known in the U.S. as a “sweatshop”), meeting with officials from the two major political parties, hiking through the jungle while listening to villagers explain how they spent days without food hiding from army helicopters during El Salvador’s civil war in the 1980s, being taken care of by the lovely Carmencita and riding around on a bus singing the Milkshake song or trying to remember the words to “De Colores.” The following are a few experiences that I found to be poignant, intense, ironically funny, or, at times, all three.
1. Immersion
The technique of jumping all the way in without giving your body or mind any time to process what you exactly are doing to it.
If you grew up in Northern California like me, this can best be understood by thinking of times you went to Stinson or Ocean Beach and braved the water. You could either proceed slowly, numbing your feet, then your ankles, then your knees, or you could hold your breath, run as fast as could and dive head first into the first crashing wave. The latter option best describes immersion and our first 24 hours in El Salvador.
The morning after arriving to San Salvador, we boarded our bus to Suchitoto, a city northeast of San Salvador that was guerilla stronghold during the civil war. My favorite thing about Suchitoto was that the town square was filled with sculptures fashioned from the remnants of the war. Chunks of helicopters, corroded ammo, helmets and other war items are turned into art installations. It is a blatant reminder that the memory of the war has not faded and has become a part of the El Salvadorian culture.
From Suchitoto our bus took us on a long bumpy road to the rural community of Copapayo. During the war, the people of Copapayo were subject to a calculated massacre by the El Salvadorian army. The night we arrived, the community council, most of whom were survivors of that massacre, told us how they had had to flee to Honduras. They recounted for us the experience of living in a refugee camp and how, with much organization and the assistance of internationals, they were able to return to Copapayo and negotiate with the government to give them land that was near the original site of the village. Without the internationals accompanying them on their return to El Salvador, it was likely that they would have been murdered.
You are probably wondering why the army would purposely kill civilians. In a now infamous analogy, the El Salvadorian government likened the guerilla fighters to fish, and the villages in the mountains where guerillas would hide to a lake. The army strategy was “If you get rid of the lake, the fish will not survive.” This horrifying tactic was probably learned by generals who attended the School of the Americas here in the United States.
After spending a cozy night in a school classroom with my 14 traveling companions and being serenaded for most it by a chorus of moos, barks, baaa-aahs and cockadoodle-dos, we were led by boat and foot to the original site of Copapayo. As we hiked up a mountain jungle, tromping on leaves and dodging prickly plants, four survivors of Copapayo described their way of life 20 years ago, while also pointing to different spots where the terrain was altered by the army’s bombardment and showing us a ravine where a young mother and her child hid from the view of army helicopters for two days.
Exhausted from the hike and the reality of what had occurred 20 years previously on the very land we were walking on, we arrived to a clearing to find a burial ground for victims of the massacre and a plaque memorializing what had occurred. In the sunlit clearing, standing graveside, our guides, Tita, Mariseli, and an elderly man and woman, each told us their story. We heard about family that each of them had lost.
The most intriguing story was that of Tita. After having taken a bullet through her cheek during the massacre, she took up arms and joined the guerilla movement as a combatant. This small woman with a quiet voice was evidence of what we had already come to realize: women played an enormous role in the guerilla movement. They were strategists, combatants and communications officers, but most of all, they were the unwavering emotional foundation for the guerilla movement.
From the moment we arrived in Copapayo, the community embraced us and opened up to us. Of course, some of us did not waste any time interacting with the younger set. Ironically enough, the students who knew the least amount of Spanish, as in zilch, bonded with the kids the most expediently and earnestly. I look over to see Sue Lake involved in an enthusiastic frisbee toss with kids, who up until a minute and a half ago had never seen a frisbee. Girls with various sparkly stickers adorning their cheeks, obviously the mark of Natasha, are multiplying rapidly. Many members of the group made a real effort to talk to our hosts without the aid of a translator. Those connections made our time in Copapayo that much more special. It was unbelievable to me that we had only been in Copapayo for 24 hours, and that it had only been 48 hours since arriving in El Salvador.
2. The Left and the Right
During the week, we met with representatives from the two dominant political parties in El Salvador, the ARENA (National Republican Alliance) and the FMLN (Farabundo Martí National Liberation Front). The ARENA party is one step short of the extreme right, has controlled the presidency since the war and, as of yesterday, continues to control it. The ARENA is a proponent of a pure free market system and allied with the United States, no matter our policy. On the other side of the spectrum is the FMLN. The FMLN was the group opposing the military during the civil war and a main tenant of the peace accords in 1992 was that the FMLN be an officially recognized political party. Today the FMLN has a plurality of seats in the national assembly and controls the mayoralships of most of El Salvador’s largest cities. Although the FMLN has encompassed a large portion of the center-left in recent years, they are still stigmatized by their foes as being communists and sympathetic to Fidel Castro. Nothing like rekindling the fear left over from the Cold War to get one on your opponent.
I will compare and contrast our visits with each of these parties and leave you to find the hidden ironies:
Who: The ARENA party arranged for us to meet with one of the youngest and most junior deputies of the Assembly. He was handsome and shiny, but it was apparent that he was not a policymaker. At the FMLN’s offices, we met with a senior deputy who was one of the founders of the party. He is the party’s expert on how the legislative system works.
What they said: Most memorable for me was when the ARENA deputy was reviewing his party’s platform and at one point said, “We don’t concern ourselves with the environment.” A couple of sentences later, he digressed for a moment and said, “Well… we should do something about the environment…..but, we don’t.” Keep in mind that there are no environmental controls in El Salvador.
The FMLN deputy discussed the progress of the party and how there had been a recent division the party between the hardliners and the more center-left. He explained that this schism would probably cost them the presidential election in March, which, at one point, they were favored to win. When one member of the group asked if the ARENA and FMLN deputies ever worked together on bi-partisan legislation, he laughed to himself and gave a simple “no,” avoiding any unfavorable comments about the other party.
The digs: The differences of the offices and how we were received was the most indicative to me of the differences between these two parties. When we arrived at the ARENA offices, women wearing lots of makeup and wearing uniform skirt suits greeted us. A male assistant led us to a room with a long u-shaped desk surrounded by walls marked with gold plaques, engraved with quotes from previous ARENA leaders, blown up patriotic images, and lit glass display cases. We were offered water, but were served two by two with a five-minute gap in-between. The restroom off of this stately conference room had a sitting area with two ornate chairs beside a window with a view of the city. Past the regal sitting area was the bathroom. In the bathroom, the ceiling was leaking, there was no toilet paper, no soap, and no paper towels. Granted, none of these items were a regular appearance in El Salvadorian bathrooms, but come on, this is the ruling party.
At the FMLN office we were led to a simple, yet functional, space, where tables were pushed together to form a rectangle for all of us to sit around. A couple of the women, both in pantsuits, chatted with us and asked if we needed anything and brought us cold water almost immediately (cold water is a rarity there, I swear!). The women then pulled a room-divider out, so they could conduct a meeting in the same space. On the wall was the FMLN logo, which, to my surprise, was constructed of red felt against the white wall. There were pictures hanging of images from the civil war of the 1980s: protestors being arrested, people being dragged from their homes into the street, and other scenes of brutality. No gold plaques, no grandiose pictures of previous leaders. Before the meeting started, I visited the facilities. Not only did I find toilet paper a plenty, soap, and paper towels, but there were also toilet seat covers! Unless you have traveled to a developing country, you may not understand what a glorious find this was. There was no fancy sitting room with ornate chairs, just the necessities without any frills.
3. The Rose Garden
The last thing I will write here is regarding our experience at the University of Central America. In the late 1980s, four Jesuit priests, their maid, and her daughter were dragged from their beds at the UCA by members of the military and shot to death on the lawn outside their quarters. Now, in that spot, there is a rose garden. Because the Jesuits had encouraged the people of El Salvador to stand up against the government oppression, they were considered subversive. A suit against the assassins had been brought a few years ago, only to be dismissed repeatedly. Coincidentally enough, while we were visiting the UCA, the attorneys for the victims’ family held a press conference there to announce that their appeal to the Supreme Court (the court of last resort) had lost and there was little hope that there would ever be justice for these murders. The lead attorney was notably outraged and pointed out how the court’s opinion was racked with flawed reasoning and false interpretations of the law. A couple of us approached one of the attorneys to ask if he wouldn’t mind speaking to us for a few minutes. The attorney graciously took the time to talk to us. He led us to a spot where away from the commotion, leaving reporters to wait on the sidelines. We all felt so honored that he took that time to talk to us about the case, the decision and the process.
Professor Mertens, who had been to El Salvador with a delegation three years previously, kept telling us that most of the people we would be talking with would appreciate our attentive ear as much as we would appreciate learning from them. The experience with the attorney at the UCA really drove her point home for me.
I want to thank Professor Mertens and my 13 classmates for one of the most memorable weeks of my life and definitely my best experience in law school.
Provided by The Advocate
Written by Emily Williams
